Emily the Strange: The Strange (Hardcover)

Equal parts Edward Gorey and MTV's Daria, Emily, an icon to the Hot Topic crowd, is a walking brew of teenage ennui filtered through a Halloweenish, macabre sensibility and tons of red and black ink. Now she conquers the comics with a collection of brief but mordant episodes. The first deals with Emily's extreme boredom and her failed attempts at defeating it, like stitching the head of a rooster onto the body of a kangaroo, creating, of course, the world's first kangarooster, or interviewing punk legends the Damned in a cemetery. In "The Lost Issue," she visits Oz only to find Ozzy Osbourne in the ruler's throne and loses herself in a warehouse store-Lostco-where the free food samples ("Goat Pockets," or tandoori lint) turn shoppers into zombies. Much of the pleasure comes from the writing team's acumen for pun-craft : "Lost in Space" is a veritable cauldron of semi-bad puns referencing everything from Super Mario Brothers and The Matrix to Alice in Wonderland. Visually, the book is a feast of shadow and Lovecraftian nastiness while remaining just a bit cute. Disaffected teens who have already embraced the Emily empire to their sorrowful bosoms should like this fine. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved